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I'm 24. I realized a few years ago that my highest value in life is autonomy. I want to be able to wake up tomorrow, and say "Hey, I've never been to Sweden," and just hop on a plane, without worrying about a small matter called rent.

I'm 28, and I could do that today if I wanted to. And surprise, surprise, I don't have a million dollars. That's my point. Figure out what you want and make it a priority. Don't spend your life working for a big payoff so you can then figure out what you want. You'll never get there.

Figure out what you want and make it a priority.

I want more things out of life than can be easily prioritized. A million dollars would go a long way towards making it so I wouldn't have to make just one thing my priority.

"I'm 28, and I could do that today if I wanted to. And surprise, surprise, I don't have a million dollars. That's my point. Figure out what you want and make it a priority. Don't spend your life working for a big payoff so you can then figure out what you want. You'll never get there."

I don't want to work for anyone again. Do I need a million dollars? probably not, but I'm going to need a business that has enough income coming in to support my (and possibly anyone that works for me).

I don't intend to spend my life working for the big payoff. I like PG's concept of 'compressing your working life down to a few years.' Like I said to a work colleague, "Who wants to retire at 65, when you're old and geriatric, with barely any lead left in your pencil?"

At 30, I'd like to have my own music studio. But rather than simply making do with an M-Box and a cheap mic, I'd like a RME Hammerfall and Shure SM-58s. All thing being equal, money makes life easier.

It's like the old argument about bootstrapping vs VC. How many founders wouldn't want a longer runway while they iterate?

Thought so.

Admit this much: Up to a point, money simply makes life easier. And I suspect that point is WAY past 1 million.

In closing, allow me to post an unfinished poem I began writing a few months ago, as a repsonse to the 'wealth deniers.':

--------AN ODE TO LUCRE--------

We praise the One whose bounty feeds,

And to whose temple success leads,

Who blesses us with cream, with salmon,

All praise to Thee, O God, O Mammon!

The heathen speak against they name,

That thy seekers should hide in shame,

And that your love shall be our ruin,

Let papuperdom be their undoing!

(While on our grills, sirloin is stewing.)

Despite their speech, they too seek rent-

But saying for their Lord it's meant!

Till paid his due, Devil won't relent,

Even God demands his ten percent...

By suffering they have been selected,

Because thy precepts they rejected,

And while they in their misery puffeth,

We enter pearly Gates of Buffet.

Thou sent to us thy sacred prophets,

To lead us to make naked profits,

Who taught us how to raise our station:

O Atlas Shrugged! O Wealth of Nations!

I'll be finishing it soon...

I'm sorry, but you are so naive about your own nature. Allowing yourself to focus on getting money, and even worse, fantasizing about what you will do with it, just ingrains this habit deeper in your consciousness. If you keep doing this, and you are as much a slave to money as you come across as in this post, I suspect one of two things will happen to you...

One: you'll somehow get all this money you want, start spending it, and eventually wonder at how you don't feel any different, and somehow still crave even more money, fame, success, etc. Whatever insecurities you had before still subsist--you're still the same you. And whatever respect you think you have earned from the world for being successful feels hollow, if you perceive it at all (because honestly no one respects people just for being financially successful--they are either merely envious or just don't care--and why should they?).

Or two: things go a different way and you realize you don't have a path to making a lot of money (or the path you thought you had closed up), at which point you get extremely depressed and increasingly indignant at how others are "doing so much better" than you, despite how much mental energy you had put into fantasizing about your future wealth and devising ways to acquire it.

I agree that autonomy is a good value. I think for you the best starting point for acquiring that autonomy would be to stop being chained to the idea that having money will give it to you.

I definitely respect people for being financially successful if they added value to the world doing so (wealth creation). Also, my own life experiences do go against what you're saying - as I've made more money, I've always become more satisfied with my life, and don't see why that would change in the future.

What else has changed in your life as you've made more money? Correlation does not imply causation. Are you sure it's the money that has made you more satisfied?

As a counterpoint I have more money now than I've ever had, and am at an all-time low in satisfaction with my life.

"What if your boss made you miserable every day, but you can't quit because of the mortgage."

This situation and others like it are more common with people who put too much importance on money. You can't ignore money, but giving it more weight than its due can actually get you into situations where you're held hostage by it.

Autonomy comes from taking control of your life, not from a certain income. An autonomous person can make the income happen. I know people who make far, FAR more that I but they are shackled to their jobs in exactly the way you describe in the quote above. Does that make me smart and them stupid? Well, yes, it does. Or maybe not stupid, but so lazy they can't be bothered to think about how to get what they really want, which is autonomy.